A ten-year old boy hides at the top of a stairwell listening to his father tell his harrowing story-a story about almost being gassed to death in a Nazi concentration camp. He doesn't dare ask his father to explain. His dad offers no further details. Follow Mort Laitner's journey from childhood to retirement as he obsesses about his father, the Holocaust, Judaism, and life. Laitner learns about his father's nightmarish travels during World War II from his father's Holocaust tapes, from books describing how he worked as a doctor in slave labor camps, from a doctoral thesis on Holocaust studies, and from a transcript of his father's testimony at a US military tribunal which led to a Nazi commandant's death sentence. Clue by clue, missing details come to light describing that fateful day when his father stood naked and faced the gas chamber. Read the remarkable story of how Wolf Laitner was sent to Russia with a unit of 349 fellow Jewish prisoners in disguise. They were given German military training and uniforms bearing swastikas, then sent to Russia during Operation Barbarossa to work on the railway system. Hitch a ride across America, Europe, Asia and Africa, from the 1950s through the new millennium as Mort Laitner shares his family's stories about survival, prejudice, luck, love, and miracles.

Offering a fresh way to look at one of the best-selling hip hop artists of the early 21st century, this book presents Eminem's words, images, and music alongside comments from those who love and hate him, documenting why Eminem remains a cultural, spiritual, and economic icon in global popular culture. Eminem: The Real Slim Shady examines the rapper, songwriter, record producer, and actor who has become one of the most successful and well-known artists in the world. Providing far more than a biography of his life story, the book provides a comprehensive description, interpretation, and analysis of his personas, his lyrical content, and the cultural and economic impact of Eminem's work through media. It also contains the first in-depth content analysis of 200 of the rapper's most popular songs from 1990 through 2012. The book is organized into three sections, each focusing on one of the artist's public personas (Slim Shady, Marshall Mathers, Eminem), with each section further divided into chapters that explore various aspects of Eminem's cultural, spiritual, and economic significance. Besides being a book that every fan of Eminem and pop music will want to read, the work will be valuable to researchers in the areas of race and ethnicity, communication, cultural and musical studies, and hip hop studies. Includes never before conducted analysis of 200 of Eminem's most popular lyrics, presented visually with tables and charts Provides an up-to-date, combined discography, videography, and bibliography of the rapper's work

Welcome to the glam and fab world of Sam Faiers - star of the hit TV programme The Only Way is Essex. Read on to find out what it takes to be a REAL Essex Girl. The Oxford Dictionary definition of an 'Essex Girl': A brash, materialistic young woman of a type supposedly found in Essex or surrounding areas in the south-east of England. The Sam Faiers definition of an 'Essex Girl': A stylish, hard-working, big-hearted and family-minded young woman found in Brentwood or nearby areas (and Marbs). At the start of 2010 Sam Faiers was a normal 19-year-old girl from Brentwood: she was working in a local bank, plotting a glamour modelling career and planning what outfit to wear to Sugar Hut. Then the first episode of TOWIEaired, and suddenly Sam was catapulted into a world of champagne cocktails, TV studios, nightclubs and paparazzi. In Living Life the Essex Way, Sam lifts the lid on her childhood, her rise to fame and her beauty regime, as well as her dating rules, dealing with instant fame, the men in her life and what really goes on behind the scenes on the hit ITV2 show.